From Auto Shankar to Amitabh Bachchan: Exploring Personality Rights In India

29th July, 2024 - 9:56 am Categories: Celebrity Rights 0 Comments

Abstract

This article explores the evolution of a celebrity’s personality rights. The legal development of these rights has varied across jurisdictions, with significant cases in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India shaping the landscape. Notable Indian cases, such as R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu and Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, have established the connection between privacy and publicity rights. As digital media continues to expand, the need for comprehensive legislation to protect these rights becomes important, ensuring that individuals can manage their public personas while safeguarding their privacy in a rapidly evolving commercial environment.

Introduction

Different celebrities gain recognition and fame through various avenues such as actings, music, sports, politics or other forms of public entertainment. Their status comes with certain unique form of challenges, particularly concerning protection of their identity and image. Personality attributes of these celebrities could be often commercially exploited without their authorization. Hence, two paramount reasons for a celebrity to protect his personality rights includes protection from unauthorized commercial exploitation of one’s image and secondly, right to privacy or to be left alone.

Popularly referred to as publicity rights, personality rights are intended to shield a person’s identity from unauthorised commercial use. With the help of these rights, celebrities can manage the uses of their name, likeness, voice, and other distinguishing characteristics, ensuring that their public persona will bring them financial gain.

Legal Development in the West

Right to publicity can be traced back to the advent of ‘right to be left alone,’ giving rise to recognition of individuality and protection from disturbance of privacy. In the United States (‘US’), evolution publicity rights entwined with privacy rights due to a combination of precedents and societal development. The remarkable judgement in Haelan Laboratories Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gums is the foundation of publicity rights. The parties were business rivals and manufacturers of chewing gum. The plaintiff introduced a deck of cards having faces of baseball players for increasing its sales revenue. This was covered under an exclusive contract for a defined term where players were barred from entering a similar contract with any other gum manufacturers. However, Topps Chewing Gum Inc. managed to persuade the athletes to authorise usage of their photographs for selling its products in the background of the abovementioned contract.

[Image Sources: Shutterstock]

The defendants argued that “a man has no legal interest in the publication of his picture other than his right of privacy.” This contention was rejected by the US court of appeal and it held that “a man has a right in the publicity value of his photograph, and that such a grant may validly be made without an accompanying transfer of a business or of anything else.” This led to recognition of right to publicity as a paramount right.

In other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, publicity rights are a recent development. English jurisdiction used defamation laws to protect personality rights with a little regard for right to privacy. With the development in Douglas v. Hello! Ltd., a shift in English jurisprudence can be observed. This case involved illicit publication of photographs from a celebrity wedding. The courts ruled that celebrities too possess a right to expect reasonable privacy like any other individual.

Legal Development in India

With the development in Indian media industry, publicity rights gradually evolved in the background of right to privacy. The first paramount case can be traced back to 1955, R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (‘The Auto Shankar Case’). The Supreme Court (‘SC’) recognised right to control commercial use of an individual’s identity within the spectrum of right to privacy. The court emphasized that no one could publish anything referring to an individual’s private affairs without their consent unless it was based on public records. This case laid the groundwork for understanding personality rights as an extension of privacy rights.

Further, in 2009, Delhi High Court clarified that right to publicity is inherently linked to an individual’s right to privacy in the case of ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Aarvee Enterprises. The court ruled out non-living entities from the purview of personality rights, thereby excluding corporations. In 2011, the Delhi High Court further recognized the right to control the commercial use of a human identity by defining the concept of ‘publicity rights’ in the case of Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers.

Later in 2015, the Madaras High Court, after relying on previous two judgements, ruled that personality rights can be claimed only by individuals who have acquired the status of a celebrity. It also ruled that “Infringement of right of publicity requires no proof of falsity, confusion, or deception, especially when the celebrity is identifiable.” (Shivaji Rao Gaikwad v. Varsha Productions).

The famous case of 2020, Anil Kapoor v. Simply life India & Ors. further expanded the scope of personality rights by recognizing various attributes associated with an individual’s persona, including their name, voice, and likeness. The Delhi High Court ruled that unauthorized use of these attributes could infringe on an individual’s right to privacy and livelihood, highlighting the broader implications of personality rights in protecting an individual’s reputation. The most recent case, Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Negi & Ors. (2022) is a testament to Bollywood celebrities becoming vigilant about their inherent personality rights. In this case, Amitabh Bachchan sued various vendors commercially exploiting his reputation for a gain in their business practices. The Delhi High Court granted an injunction against a jeweller for unauthorized usage of Amitabh’s celebrity status. This reinforced the recognition of personality rights in contemporary legal context.

Conclusion

In this era of digital media publicity versus privacy rights remains a complex legal area. Public figures go through several difficulties in managing their image as they retain their private life, owing to the invention of social media platforms that allow for quick publicizing of personal aspects. In India, major cases such as R. Rajagopal vs. State of Tamil Nadu; and ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises helped in shaping this legal concept with particular reference to publicity rights. These cases confirmed that privacy also entails regulating one’s name for commercial purposes; nonetheless there is no law governing this issue hence people tend to depend on other laws which do not sufficiently deal with matters relating to persona rights within contemporary digital context.

As the commercial landscape evolves, there is an urgent need for comprehensive legislation to protect personality rights, ensuring individuals can control the use of their identities while balancing the interests of privacy and publicity

Author: Ayush Singh Verma, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to chhavi@khuranaandkhurana.com or at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorney.

References

• Haelan Laboratories Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gums (1953) 202 F.2d.866 (2d.cir).
• Douglas v. Hello! Ltd 2001 2 WLR 992.
• Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994) 6 SCC 632
• ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Aarvee Enterprises 2003 (26) PTC 245
• Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers (2012) 50 PTC 486.
• Shivaji Rao Gaikwad v. Varsha Productions 2015 (62) PTC 351 (Madras).
• Anil Kapoor v. Simply life India & Ors CS(COMM) 652/2023.
• Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Negi & Ors CS(COMM) 819/2022